Powered by

Pyrénée

Pyrénée

PYRÉNÉE (1999) is a 64-page French-language graphic novel (bande déssinée) by Regis Loisel and Philippe Sternis. It has also appeared in Dutch and German editions. There also exist unofficial translations in other languages, e.g. English and Russian. The English version can be found on Scribd at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/65988731/Pyrenee . The story is about a girl, orphaned in an earthquake, being raised in the French Pyrenees after which she is named, by a former circus bear that escaped during the same earthquake. Pyrénée is also taught for a while by a wise, blind old eagle.

Sternis has continued to produce posters and prints based on the characters.

Unlike most comic versions of The Jungle Books, Pyrénée features actual nudity, although of course it’s perfectly innocent. Like Mowgli before he encounters humans, Pyrénée simply doesn’t know what clothes are (although in the depths of midwinter she does briefly wear a fur coat and boots that the eagle has found). European publishers certainly don’t seem to have a problem with the comic’s nudity. There was even a limited edition statuette of the naked girl and the bear (above left). But somehow I can’t see Pyrénée ever being published in America, “The Land of the Free”, with all its paranoid censorship.